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I'd develop scenarios in which the first part of each is to search the
index to find a topic that will help them perform the task. Note the
terms they try to search for.
It is an important tenet of usability testing that you shouldn't ask the
user what s/he _would_ do; instead, you set up scenarios to observe what
s/he _actually_ does. It goes back to a principle of sociology: you get
one answer when you ask a group about its culture; you get a different
answer when you instead _observe_ its culture.
Peace,
jim
jim grey \ Documentation Manager
Made2Manage Systems, Inc. \ jgrey -at- made2manage -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: Brenda Ruetschi [mailto:Bruetschi -at- ALPHA88 -dot- COM]
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 1998 11:03 AM
Subject: Indexing/Usability Q
Hello all -
If we want to test the words that a user will be using to look
up a
topic in an index, for example assign, associate, relate, link, how do
we
word the question in the usability test?
Help?
Brenda Ruetschi
Technical Communications
Alpha Technologies, Inc.
Ext. 746
